ASUS Crosshair V Formula Review

The ASUS Crosshair V Formula is a part of ASUS’ ROG line of products. It comes feature packed and loaded with accessories for whatever you may require. The ROG product line is considered the crème de la crème of ASUS products. They are built for the enthusiast and the (extreme) overclockers.

The Crosshair V Formula has four PCIe x16 lanes (the bottom slot runs at x4) although due to the way that they are layed out, only tri-SLI or CrossFireX is supported. Dual x16 lanes are available for dual graphics cards or x16/x8/x8 will be used when you use three cards.

Some of you may be wondering why you would drop £170 on an AMD motherboard and a AMD FX CPU when they perform so poorly compared to Intels offerings such as the Core i5, which is faster in every respect. Even if the software is programmed to use all eight cores efficiently, the Core i5 will be better off. It also uses a vast amount of energy and generates plenty of heat. The Core i5 system is in an entirely different league in every respect and it makes it very difficult to justify such a purchase.

The ASUS ROG is a division of their branding which is aimed at the enthusiasts and (extreme) overclockers. The ROG line is and always has been feature packed but you definitely pay the price for the parts. The Crosshair V Formula supports all of AMDs AM3 and AM3+ processors once the BIOS has been updated. Full suuport for 3-way SLI or CrossFire and plenty of connections at the IO for all of your peripheral requirements. It also features a Intel LAN controller which should give you that extra performance over a cheaper component, albeit a small difference.